from the politics-as-theater dept

We've written a few times that the end goal behind ACTA and TPP is to put in place frameworks by the US and Western Europe for certain things, and then pressure the key developing nations to join in based on the framework that has already been established. That is, let the US and Europe set the rules... and then pressure Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) countries to "join" later, when they can no longer influence the rules. It's not hard to see how the plan is really about looking for ways to stifle those up-and-coming economies. Of course, the end result will actually be the opposite. Since those countries won't be saddled with overly restrictive laws (hopefully), there will be interesting opportunities for businesses.

And, of course, among the BRIC countries, none is seen as important as China. Thus, the real goal behind TPP and ACTA isn't just to set up this framework around things like IP (TPP covers much more), but then to get China to sign on to support that framework. Of course, China, whose leaders are much more savvy than the west likes to give them credit for, have made it pretty clear that they have no interest in signing up for ACTA or TPP.

"regrets that China has not taken part in the negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)"

While the overall resolution covered a number of other trade issues concerning the EU and China -- meaning that those who voted for it may have been focused on other issues, rather than just this one -- there apparently was a vote specific to this line and it passed. MEP Christian Engstrom, who brought this to attention, notes that this should be a warning sign that, despite strong momentum against ACTA in the EU Parliament, it could still pass.

from the i-don't-get-it dept

In the distant past, Microsoft used to be willing to admit that -- especially in developing countries -- the company was significantly better off due to infringement. Bill Gates famously said: "As long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." More recently, of course, Microsoft has been increasingly aggressive when it comes to its anti-piracy campaigns. The company recently did a PR stunt around Global Play Fair Day, in which it released a study, done by Keystone Strategy, which I think is supposed to explain the importance of not infringing. However, the message that it actually seems to be sending is: "paying for Microsoft software is bad for business."

I'm not joking.

The key point that we learn is that companies in Brazil, Russia, India and China "ultimately have a $1.6 billion (U.S.) competitive advantage over companies that play fair by using genuine software." In other words, if you pay for our software, you're at a competitive disadvantage. Some of the other points from the press release, which only seem to drive this point home further:

Piracy creates more than $2.9 billion of competitive disadvantage per year across manufacturers in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and Asia-Pacific regions.

Over a five-year software life cycle, manufacturing companies in BRIC countries will lose more than $8.2 billion to their cheating competitors.

There are more than 4.1 million PCs legally licensed by manufacturing firms that play by the rules in China. The competitive disadvantage to these firms amounts to about $837 million annually, or $4.18 billion over the typical five-year software life cycle.

Indian manufacturers experience $505 million per year in competitive harm. Their pirating competitors could use this money to hire more than 215,000 new employees.

That last one seems to be saying: "pirating software creates jobs!" Again, the overall takeaway from this appears to be that paying for Microsoft software is bad for business, puts you at a competitive disadvantage and is going to cost you millions. I guess kudos for the honesty, but I'm sorta confused as to why Microsoft is sending out this kind of message. Well, chances are that it's part of a push to influence not companies, but policymakers to "crack down." But, even so, it's an odd campaign. If not paying for software gives you such a huge advantage, couldn't this also be interpreted as a massive promotional campaign for free and open source software?